How I roll, yo

Things are heating up here in ex-Texpatriate land.

Let's see, where to start. First of all, HOW FUCKING MUCH DO I LOVE MY NEW CAR???? A whole fucking lot, that's how much. She's definitely RubySue, and I realized, when it comes to cars, I am a big ol' lesbian. (Please note, I am ONLY a car lesbian, I am not a lesbian in any other way shape or form.) I love RubySue, she turns me on. Her fast throttle, the short throw shifter, the way her leather (heated) seats cup my ass. The smell of her. Mmm, RubySue is the girl for me.

It's good that I love her that much because I keep getting lost in Houston, so me and RubySue are getting well acquainted. Yesterday, after dropping a colleague off at her home in the Museum District, I somehow ended up downtown, turned completely around, not knowing WHERE I was. I guess I could have used the gps on my phone, but I was stuck in a web of one way streets and saw no place to pull over, so I gamely wove through the streets until I found a street name I kind of recognized and took it. Luckily, I was right, and managed to get back to the flat eventually, though over an hour after I had planned to. It wasn't too bad, I opened up the moonroof, listened to some music (She Wants Revenge sounds good on the stereo, even with that wierd woofer thingy making it all thumpy. The woofer is going away. Soon.)

I got home, desperately in need of wine, kind of jangly from the traffic. While i opened my rosé, my friend Karen, the Blogless Scot, pinged me on Facebook and we set up a skype session, her in Australia at 730 in the morning, me in Houston at 530 in the afternoon! She cracked open some morning beers in my honor and I toasted her with rosé.

See that's us Skyping! She took a screenshot!That was fun.

We chatted for a few hours and it was like being with each other at our usual bar in Oslo, so nice to catch up! While Karen and I were talking, Rich called and my friend Anne called. I had to hold them off, but Anne was insistent I come over to her house TONIGHT because her neighbors were over and they were having a bit of a drinking sesh. As I'd already had some wine, I didn't want to risk driving RubySue, so I called a cab to go over to Anne's. She lives in a big old Victorian house in the Heights. The driver either couldn't read or was the newest driver in ALL of Houston, because I had to direct him the entire way, including telling him to turn off that damned nav system and just do what I was telling him to do. He was nice, but clueless. (Definitely NOT on the level of a London black cab, that's for sure.)

Got to Anne's, and then the night got wierder. We played drinking games that included setting our Sambucca dipped fingers on fire (you hold your flaming finger up a la Statue of Liberty while taking a shot) and then there was another thing where the sambucca was set on fire and rolled around in a glass (picture below) and then a game where you hold these little electronic handles in one hand against three other people, and the last one to let go of the handle after a song plays gets shocked. Yeah, I know. It was a strange mix of torture and devil-may-care and hello-I-am-16-again with an edge of Gestapo. Except everyone was mid 40's and they all had kids, who they were trying their best to hide from. By the way, all the drinking games came from an English guy, so don't be telling me Texans are the freaky ones.

I swear, I see Anne and I am drunk in 10 minutes. It never fails. She and her husband Nick are consummate hosts, so much fun, and the sort of people that when you hang with them, you don't notice if you haven't seen them in 3 years, because you just fall right back into the fun. (I've known Anne since I was 12, btw.) I called another cab to get back to the apartment, and was home and stumbling into bed by 12:30.

And now my friend Bookhart and her daughter (my goddaughter)(and don't tease me about being a heathen with a goddaughter!)  are on their way over from Austin and we are going to have a girls night in Houston, go skating at the Galleria, and have a nice catch up.

So far, a good weekend, and it's only Saturday at noon!